this week was generally overshadowed by the compulsion to kill people and the lack of energy that comes with drastic cutting out of carbohydrates!

Ok…I’ll explain that…

Remember last week when I told you about this new training I was doing… at the not quite as scary as it looks gym… well this training came with an eating plan, and this eating plan came with carbs only at breakfast in the form of two weetabix…

This very rapidly turned me into a crazy, homicidal emotionally unstable person who couldn’t remember how to use their brain!

It also made me lack energy for doing extra things like walking around and exercising…don’t get me wrong…I still did it, but boy was it hard work!

So after threatening to trow in the towel several times, I mentioned this to the person who set the plan…who said I must be doing a lot more exercise than they thought (well…I did mention what I did…but I guess he didn’t take it on board…) and has now added rice into the plan which mainly consists of chicken or salmon and veg! So I am giving it another chance and I will keep you posted…

now to the exercise…

Day 8: Tuesday…

really not like this…

Tuesday was training day… no not like the film!!

It really wasn’t like the film, thankfully but it was hard work!! I trained shoulders and calves, both areas I don’t normally concentrate on…well, no, I *do* train shoulders…but I hate it and my calves as you may have inferred are just a massive problem! Apparently this will help…

Tuesday was also walking day 😀 I took one of my clients (yes…I have those did I mention it?) on a 6km brisk walk to supplement her PT…it was lots of fun and also counted to my daily activity 😀 win-win really!!

Day 9: Wednesday

Well what do you think happened on wednesday?

walking!! about 2.5km at lunchtime…

but also…of course…

Dancing!!!

Lots and lots of dancing! even more than normal as the number of dancers was low. But I never mind more dancing! More dancing is always good!!

Day 10: Thursday…

Thursday I went and met a new client 😀 woohoo! which meant I had to demonstrate things and jump around somewhat… Not as much as if I was actually training…but it helps…

I love my kettlebells…have I told you that?

After I finished training, I did some kettlebells 🙂 and some tabata, it was quite a random session which involves, swings, clean and presses, high pulls and tabata of frog jumps and skaters, with a random interspertion of high knee intervals.

It wasn’t a *lot* of training but it was some 🙂 and by this point in the week my low energy / disillusionment and general anger form lack of carbs was kicking in!!

Day 11: Friday

Friday morning was PT day with Matt 😀

lots of fun and boxing and a general challenge to try to hit/kick him…not hard of course but a sort of sparring type exercise…he didn’t know about my short fuse at this point…but luckily I wasn’t angry and the temporary energy boost brought about by two weetabix ( ) was in effect so I didn’t go all out and kill him 😉

there were kettlebells and trx activities and lifting and all sorts…I loved it…even the burpees (but don’t tell Matt 😉 )

Day 12: Saturday

Saturday morning was training at the new gym…in which I nearly fell over due to having no glycogen stores left, none at all!!!

After saying this, then demonstrating it by being considerably weaker than the last time I was there, I was given permission to eat carbs and lots of them that day…to be honest, I was going to do that anyway as I had a dance out later and being weak for a dance out due to something controllable is just not an option!

So after a combined legs and back session, I went home and ate food! Enough food that I would have all the energy that is required of a Mythago dancer 😀

Then came dancing!! Awesome aweosme dancing. it was a local brewery’s open day which they call hopfest and there are bands and beer and of course the unrivaled Mythago 🙂

It was a really excellent dance out! The audience was enthusiastic which really helps and the acoustics of the venue made the music sound awesome which in turn buoys up the dancers!

I would love to have a video for you but I was in most of the dances and didn’t get a chance to take one… the sound and the atmosphere was awesome! I even got to dance probably my favourite dance Summerland. It is my favourite now I am no longer scared of it 😀

Day 13: Sunday

Sunday involved pilates 😀 I miss pilates when I can’t go! So this was excellent!! It is hard but awesome and I always come out feeling better than when I went in 😀

I also attempted a run, but this was not really that successful! Better than nothing though 😀

Day 14: Monday

Monday was back to walking a 2.6km lunchtime walk constitutes a rest day 🙂

I also taught my bootcamp class…which involves quite a lot of activity…just not *quite* as much as those that attend the class 😉

That is a whole week of change…I wonder if there has been any change…I suspect it is hard to tell.

There have been some changes is that the same thing as change?

Anyway…

Tuesday was day of change the first!

Tuesday is the day on which I traditionally have PT…and this Tuesday was no different! It was an awesome early morning PT session too. The format hasn’t changed too much since I last told you about it, there was boxing and kicking and some of it was sparring which was generally awesome as I got to attempt to kick/hit matt…and I managed it more often than I expected.. 😀

there was also some squatting heavy heavy squatting 🙂 in fact….

drum roll please…

woohoo New PB 😀

There was a new squatting paddington bear!! I managed to squat 65 kg 🙂 this made me happy!! I suspect my range of motion wasn’t as good as it could have been but it was still good 😀

It is also an excellent excuse for a paddington gif 😀

Tuesday also involved a lunchtime walk 🙂

Wednesday was Dancing day!! (in a similar vein to Tuesday, Wednesday has not changed much) there was dancing and dancing and dancing and dancing!

You get the idea, there was lots of dancing 🙂 especially as there were not that many dancers at practice so I got to dance many many dances 😀 including (just for Nancy) spank the monkey 😀

before there was dancing…there was walking, about 2km of lunchtime walking to be precise 🙂

Thursday involved a NEW THING…

I should have this on a t shirt!

Yes another NEW THING!!

It is related to the terrifying new thing that I tried a few weeks ago…

Well I decided, that as much as I love the idea of that gym 40 mins to drive to a gym is just too much, it make an hour gym session into over 2 hours which is too much!

not as scary as the one in Worthing…probably

So I looked around and I fount the forest gym: http://www.theforestgym.co.uk/ It is a bodybuilder / powerlifter gym and is in a hut in Crawley…Crawley is in its self terrifying but I thought I may as well give it a try! I made this much more likely to happen by arranging to meet one of the trainers there to have some training and stop me running away!
So at 7am thursday morning I arrived at a hut full of heavy iron things and met a guy who them made me lift a lot of them up! (ok…as a percentage of all the heavy things in the building I didn’t pick a lot of them up but I was a lot for me!) He wormed his way into my good graces by making me do deadlifts (woohoo deadlifts) then made me hurt by making me do high reps!! pyramid sets of 12, 10, 10, 8,8 getting heavier each time…this is muscular endurance training! My body nearly mutinied…but I convinced it to carry on because much as I love strength (5 reps or lower) I know endurance is important and that is will all controbute to the muscle building that in turn leads to fat burning (yes…I am still trying to convince myself too…I know it is good but I hate high reps!).

So with a lot of training for my back and triceps, and another luchtime walk, that was Thursday!

Friday was a bit of an exercise fail.

not enough exercise…but a really good hat!

It was beyond my control as I had to attend a family wedding, so there was a lot of standing, and enough walking around to constitute 30 mins of activity…but only just…

I made up for this in two ways…

firstly I had a really awesome hat…which I made myself 🙂 (ok that doesn’t really make up for it…i just wanted an excuse to show you!)

and saturday…I definitely made up for it on saturday!

Saturday started off with my second park run. I haven’t told you about my first park run, but I will… suffice to say for now is my second park run was a much more positive experience than my first! This was entirely down to my state of mind! I was much less angry and much happier about it! I was slow but I ran much more than i did on my first attempt! I realised that these park runs were the first runs I have done over 3km since the terrible and infamous half marathon!! I was slow, but I didn’t hate it!

For the uninformed amongst you, park run is a free, weekly, timed 5km run.

I have completely stolen this from my friend Claire at Healthful Headonist right down to the title, although it could be a thing like wordless Wednesday and throwback Thursday were and I just don’t know it.

Anyway it is a thing we are doing now (well yesterday actually…it started yesterday because it was 00 days to christmas and why not!).

You know I have been faffing around on a plateau for the last n months, exercising enough to maintain fitness but not enough to move forward, eating well enough to not put weight on but not really well enough…this is how I am going to break it!

me at park run on saturday…3 days before this started…this picture reminded me that I am not where I want to be yet!!

It is a back to basics challenge for me, back to what I decided to do right at the very start of this blog.

for the next 100 days I am going to do the following:

at least 30 mins of exercise. deliberate exercisy exercise!

eat well. mostly clean, and cut out the snacks that have crept back in!

tell you all about it every day!

yes, I know it doesn’t sound like a new thing… but it is a refocus on the things that I did to make this whole thing work during the first year and a half of project fit enough to dance in a mask! I may have to work harder during the exercise periods than I did then. I may have to be even more careful with my diet but this is basically a refocus!

It is going to involve some new things…I promise! there *may* be a new gym as the last new gym proved too far away… there is likely to be more parkrun adventures (I know, I haven’t told you about the first one yet…)#

For now, I am refocusing and hopefully I will get through this plateau!

also, go follow the link at the top of the page to Claire’s site and support her too 🙂

Last week in Edinburgh I walked my little socks off!! It may have been a holiday but I don’t want you guys thinking that i was slacking off.

We flew up to Edinburgh and stayed in the city centre so everywhere we went we walked or took public transport… this in its self lead to a lot of walking…that coupled with the fact that Edinburgh is a surprisingly hilly city meant that it was an altogether fairly active holiday 🙂

This was all the walking we did…

I almost forgot to mention that our flat was on the second floor (third if you are speaking American…) and there was no lift.

So all in all, it was a lovely active holiday which also involved seeing some interesting things.

Including:

Edinburgh zoo complete with penguins, lemurs and dinosaurs!

The National Museum of Scotland complete with awesome architecture and the most random selection of exhibits, with weapons next to sewing machines next to skeletons and candle sticks with randomly distributed steam engines!

The Scottish National Gallery which, while impressive, was not filled with the sort of art I like much. I can appreciate its quality, but old masters and such are not my thing. Still interesting though 🙂

And of course a whole plethora of coffee shops, whisky shops and woolen things shops!